The Truth
by Darkness' Embrace
Summary: "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
1. PART I

**DISCLAIMER: All rights to the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. Summary quote is attributed to George Orwell, from his book 1984.**

 **WARNING: This story contains references to violence, domestic and otherwise.**

* * *

 **THE TRUTH**

 **\- a story told in three parts -**

She couldn't stop him. But is that enough? Is that enough to allow her to look at the blood of her daughter smeared on the flagstone floor and tell herself that she did everything she could? No. The answer has always been definitively no. Yet here she sits.

Marcus is sitting on the floor, the body of their child folded in his arms like a rag doll. His tears disgust her. Large and wet, they quiver on his cheeks before running through the lines on his face and dripping on to the soft, downy head held just below his chin. She sits on the green chaise lounge with the white hibiscus pattern, her toes aligned and her hands folded like a proper lady.

It takes all of her self-control not to storm over to her husband and rescue her baby girl from his large, clutching hands. She wonders absently why the fierceness of her maternal instinct has only just kicked in _now_. Why now? She cannot peel her eyes away from the scene in front of her, and it is only a modicum of emotion that she allows to slip past her walls and spill over on to her cheeks. But a modicum is more than enough for Pansy.

The floo splutters spontaneously, but Pansy barely notices. Neither does she notice as Zylphia Flint steps out, her husband following behind her.

"My God," the older Mrs. Flint whispers, her hand covering her mouth, before her jaw sets into a firm line.

She snaps her fingers imperiously. "Zandy! Clean this mess immediately!"

The small house elf appears with a sudden alacrity, attacking the red stains with ardour.

"Marcus, darling, come here now, precious. Mummy's here, love. Nothing to worry about," She bustles over, attempting to pull her son into a standing position.

Pansy catches the eye of the older Mr. Flint, and she sees the barest hint of something in his eyes that makes her far more scared than words can describe.

"What have I done? What have I done?" Marcus rocks back and forth, the futile words leaking from his mouth seemingly of their own volition.

Pansy bows her head.

"Harold! For Heaven's sake, bring something for Marcus, and the child…. Well the child is…" Her mother-in-law's voice faded as Pansy felt herself leave her body.

It was at this point that she stopped listening. When she looked at the scene in front of her and _saw_. It's so perverse – that she sits there in her finery with her delicately lined face and her flaws and her dark eyes and her beautifully clean slate of a daughter – a child who has not so much as said a word, is broken and dead in the arms of the man that should have protected her above all else.

And watching, just watching, was the one woman in the world who should have done anything for her. _Her mother._

It all catches up with her then. It is with an alarming certainty that she sees those small hands with their tiny half-moon nails, that she sees the large, dark blue eyes that stared up at her with such violent, innocent hope when she held her daughter for the first time. Her breaths heave, and Pansy knows that she is dangerously close to hyperventilation as she rises from the chaise lounge on shaky legs.

"Get away from her," It begins as a whisper, no more than a puff of wind.

"Get away from her!" She is ignored.

"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!" she shrieks, her voice long and cording, wrapping around the necks of the only family she has left.

Marcus just looks at her like a lost little boy, his hands still possessively clutching the small, limp body, and that is enough for her. She charges, face dangerously red, hair flying behind her like a wild woman, her hands reaching for something small and soft and warm and _alive_ and finding nothing but hard air and –

"Stupefy," whispers a delicately aged voice.

 _And darkness._

* * *

At the age of four months old, Hestre Danette Hadria Flint was buried in an unmarked grave in an unremarkable corner of the Flint Estate grounds with black marks around her neck and a crack in her skull.

Within six months, Pansy was pregnant again.

She did not tell Marcus until she began to show. He was upset that she hadn't informed him earlier, and she had known he would be, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. At least while the baby was inside her, Marcus couldn't get to him (she just knew it was a him). And this time, Pansy vowed, she would protect what was hers at all costs.

* * *

Ron Weasley frequented the Honest Slytherin for the sole reason that, as one might guess from its name, it was not an establishment where his normal retinue of do-gooders were likely to find him. He could get positively sloshed in peace, and he had been right in assuming upon his first visit that a bar that could barely keep itself from being shut down by the health inspector was not likely to notice or care that the mighty Ron Weasley was one of its patrons.

At any rate, he found himself sitting on one of the filthy barstools throwing down something that tasted like it contained eighty percent alcohol as he tried to make himself forget. It had been five years since the war. Five years that were nothing but one day at a time, trying to find something to live for. That was what he struggled with the most. During those years at Hogwarts, he was, for all intents and purposes, one of four people who were responsible for single-handedly saving the Wizarding World. It was a burden, to be sure, but there was something heady about it, something lustful and base and positively desperate. He shouldn't be missing the days when he had to fight for his life – for his world. But he did, God have mercy, how he did.

"Another, please," He signalled to the bartender, noticing with a wince how dark and raspy his voice had become. Too much alcohol, cigarettes, and cheap women.

"Hey, man," a bulky, tattooed guy elbowed him hard enough to make Ron wince, "some broad waitin' outside's been askin' for ya, says it's important," he said, talking around a mouthful of slimy chewing tobacco.

Ron opened his mouth to ask the unlikely messenger who she was, but he had already lumbered away, knocking into tables and chairs in his unabashedly drunken state.

He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, feeling the stubble and wishing, not for the first time, that he had something more to offer. He always came up empty.

He wasn't sure what to expect when he left the swirling, smoky warmth of the pub, but it surely wasn't this. He had not spoken to Pansy Parkinson in years, and he hadn't expected tonight to be the one that would break that record. She had never been the sort of girl to capture men's attention – she spent her life waiting on the cusp of beautiful, with short, asymmetrical features that could never come together in the way she wanted. That was the saddest thing about Pansy Parkinson to him. She could have been perfect, but she was unfinished. It was the first thing he had noticed about her, and it appeared to have been compounded upon by the years.

"Parkinson. I – well it's nice to see you, I suppose, how have you -," She cuts him off abruptly.

"It's Flint now," she states, her voice almost harsh in it's overly defensive conviction.

His eyes flit unwittingly to her ring, an elegant, delicate piece (it doesn't suit her at all), before resting on her bulging stomach. He feels his eyes widen. She is very, _very_ pregnant.

She follows the direction of his eyes, and a small smile appears on her face. "It's a boy, I can feel it,"

The smile fades abruptly. "Is there somewhere we can talk, perhaps somewhere less… public?" she asks, her voice almost nervous.

Ron nods, "Yeah, of course, come with me,"

When they arrive at his flat, Ron has the grace to be ashamed of the state of his bachelor pad, although he can sense that taking the effort to tidy things up would not be appreciated just then.

"Please, sit," offers Ron, gesturing to the messy purple chesterfield.

She sits heavily, the relief on her face palpable.

"Look, Weasley, I need you to know that I wouldn't be here unless I was desperate," he opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off. "Just let me finish,"

"As you have no doubt noticed, I'm pregnant. The baby is due any day now. Marcus has always wanted a large family, and when I married him, I wanted to give him that. And I did. I did. You see, this little one will be the third child I have carried to term, and I am determined that he will survive longer than a few months," Her eyes are wide and fierce, her hands clutched protectively around her middle.

"My husband is a monster. His mind is ill – when he gets angry he becomes a new person, a beast without bounds,"

Ron finds it hard to look at her. Her hands are shaking, her chalky lips quivering with indignation combined with more than a few drops of fear. She is strong – and he can see her in a different life, bright and vicious, a mother bear both gentle and unyielding, a mate with fire in her eyes and ice in her veins. But as it stands, she is sad and afraid and alone. She turns her head and looks down, and the livid bruise on the right side of her face is illuminated with a cruel clarity. Ron feels the anger, the unbridled, testosterone-fuelled dreams of violence that come with seeing a small, pregnant woman with a torn up face, and suddenly he feels ashamed. Of her and of him, and of what they have let themselves become.

"What I'm saying, is that when I woke up three months after my first daughter was born and found her broken like a ragdoll in my husband's arms, I told myself it was an accident. But the second time? The second time I couldn't fool myself any longer. I know that if this baby remains within my husband's reach, he will not live, and this is why I am asking you to take him in. I'm not saying forever, just until I can figure something out with Marcus,"

Pansy utters the last words with a conviction she doesn't feel, and Ron can see that in the frightened curve of her neck and the firm set of her mouth, illustrating clearly just how much effort it is taking her to force out these words.

"What? I don't understand what you're asking, Parkinson," Ron whispers, although he can clearly see the intention she has, secure in the knowledge that this is her only option.

"Please don't make me repeat it, Weasley. You know what I'm asking, and you know how hard this is for me. _Please_ ," He can see the saltwater trembling on her eyelashes, and he wants to punch something.

"God… this is so messed up..." Ron runs his hands over his face, his eyes tired and unseeing. "Why would you choose me, of all people? I'm a screw-up, Parkinson. Look at me. Is this how you want your son to grow up?" he asks tiredly.

Her eyes are fierce and dark, magnetic in their indelibility. He looks at her and sees the world. She looks at him, and sees a future that never was. Her eyes are cast down as she shuffles her slippered feet, curls of pitch-coloured hair falling around her face.

"I don't care what you think you are, Weasley. All I know is that when I needed you, you were there. You helped me, that day in sixth year, and I will never forget that. I know it's not correct or proper, but I'm asking you to help me again," Her words whisper past his lined face and slither down his throat into the warmth in his chest, and all he can do is nod.

At his nod, something fierce and utterly manic in its joy lights up Pansy's pale face, and Ron Weasley has never felt more like the man he had forgotten he was.

* * *

Zacharael Passchar Weasley (as was the name on his birth certificate) was born on November 9th, 2005. He had sweet, golden curls that neither Pansy nor Marcus could account for, and black, cat-like eyes that Pansy knew were all her own. She was glad that something, anything, would mark this baby as hers. He was beautiful and shocking and utterly perfect, and as soon as he was born, he was gone. Although it broke her heart into a million pieces, as soon as Zacharael was deemed stable and healthy, Pansy bundled him in his very own blanket, kissed him, and let him go. Her maid, Saskia, was to take him in utmost secretiveness to Weasley's crumbling flat, where she would be paid handsomely for her silence.

Once Zacharael was gone, Pansy lay in the large birthing room in the Flint Estate with bloodshot eyes and a void in her heart. Her pale hands clutched the sheets, her toes curled in panic until Saskia returned with the news that Zacharael had been safely delivered. She could not eat, she could not sleep. It was an eclipse. The chariot across the sky had fallen, her angel was gone, and she wanted to die. She wanted to sing to the heavens that he was safe, but at the same time, she thought that she would rather die than be without him.

She hadn't thought her plan through any farther than securing Zacharael's safety. She hadn't thought to imagine what Marcus would do, when he came to the birthing room to hold his son for the first time and the infant was gone. Some part of Pansy imagined that she should make up some elaborate lie, some tale that could explain her newborn's sudden disappearance. But now that he was safe, she realized that she didn't care enough to do so. She didn't have to comply with Marcus, to flatter his ego and please him in all the right ways to keep her son safe. It was just her now, just her and her sad, empty body.

So when Marcus ranted and raged and beat her until she couldn't see, she found herself unable to utter anything other than the truth.

"He's gone. My angel is gone, and you will never find him."

* * *

Ronald Weasley figured out early on that he was not cut out for fatherhood. After Pansy's first, awkward visit and his reluctant acquiescence, he had thought of the matter only briefly late at night, where it took on the qualities of a dream. He was still between worlds, a man with one foot out the door.

So on that cold, fall night, when the feverish, wide-eyed servant girl brought him the tiny bundle with fear and hope and wonder in her eyes, he was at a loss. He handed her the promised money, and then? He was left alone in his dirty flat with a tiny human, perfect in every way from his minuscule white toes to the fair silk that downed his little skull.

He sat in his flat as the tiny boy slept in his arms, and he came to the full realization of exactly what this meant. For all intents and purposes, he was a father. He knew that Pansy had had intentions to return after she was able to deal with Marcus, but he also knew Pansy, and he had known from the minute he met her that she was a walking tragedy. So Ron Weasley did the only thing he knew how to do when it came to children and flowers and feminine sensibilities.

He took Zacharael to the Burrow, where a beautiful, elderly ginger-haired woman took one look at him and knew that he was destined to be theirs.

* * *

"So, Ron, I know that everyone's been dying to know, but they're all afraid to ask. How exactly did you come across this child? Who's the mother?"

Ginny Weasley had never been good at subtlety, and delicate issues were not excepted. Ron started, almost spilling the tea he was carefully steeping.

"I've told you all before, Ginny. It doesn't matter where he came from. He's mine. His name is Zacharael Passchar Weasley and he's _mine_ ," he whispered the last word so fiercely that he shocked himself.

Ginny looked at her brother, sadness in her dark eyes. People never really imagined Ron as the heroic type, as that seemed to be Harry's job. But considering she was married to him, Ginny thought she understood Harry's particular brand of heroism, at least enough to know that it was nothing like Ron's. Nothing at all. Ron was the type of person who would never go seeking out someone to save. He didn't feel the need to put his neck on the chopping block in the same truculent manner as Harry did, but it seemed to Ginny that every time she turned around, Ron was there, helping someone new. She would never let him know, but she worried for him. She worried that his heroism was less a choice, like Harry's seemed to be, and more of a compulsion. She worried that he would spend his whole life in a desperate bid to save people in order to feel anything at all, only to wake up one morning and realize that he would have been a great deal happier had he let someone save _him_ , just once.

And then, she would look around at her big, beautiful family with the toddling, golden haired boy with rich, aristocratic features who didn't look a thing like any of them, and she would see that saving Ron was exactly what this little boy had done.

* * *

"I'm sorry, but I can't stay long," Pansy whispers, one snowy, booted foot on the threshold of Ron's flat.

He looks around nervously before letting her in. "You know this isn't safe. What are you doing here?"

She opens her mouth to speak, but he shushes her. "Zach's sleeping,"

She takes a deep breath, her gaunt frame shaking so hard that Ron can swear he hears her bones clacking together.

"I need to see my son, even if it's just for a moment. I just need to look at him, to remind myself that he's real. He is the only thing I have left to live for, even now that he's more yours than mine,"

Ron can see the toll the years have taken on Pansy's face. Her forehead is heavily lined, her skin thin and stressed. Her neck is coloured a dark purple, and Ron realizes that he cannot remember what she looked like without her husband's handprints littered over her skin. He knows that since she smuggled out Zacharael, her life has been a living hell. Marcus is regressing day by day, and he feels sick every time he thinks of them together, of the monster that this tiny, broken woman shares a bed with every night. It makes him want to kill Flint, but he knows that he will never, ever do anything of the like, if only because he has a son. Ron has a child who relies on him for food and love and support and protection and who cries when he's not around. A child whom he loves more than life itself; a child he loves more than he could ever love Pansy Parkinson, no matter how perfect for each other he knows they would have been.

So with a quiet stillness in his heart, he leads Pansy to Zacharael's bedroom door, watching as it creaks open and the delicate moonlight slants across the tiny, sleeping body. He turns to Pansy, and it physically hurts to look at her, to see the violent love in her dead eyes and to know that she will never be anything more than this. This sad woman with shadows as deep as time beneath her eyes and a heart blackened by the realities of her life.

Standing there, he can almost imagine that they are a real couple, that they are a family and they're staring at their son with love in their eyes. He realizes suddenly that that is exactly what they're doing, because even though Zacharael might not actually be their son, he is _theirs._ When Pansy dies in a tragic way, and when Ron is an old man with nobody to love him but his doting, conciliatory family, they will both live on in that starburst of a boy, the cherub with wise eyes and a heart like blown glass.

Beautiful and changeable, and above all, _theirs._

* * *

As Zacharael grows, his questions become hard and accurate, bullets that cannot be contained or explained. He is a smart boy, shrewd and beautiful and managing to combine the best traits of all his parents in a package that makes absolutely no sense.

Ron is consumed. Ever since that day in November when he sat on his threadbare couch and realized what the tiny infant he was holding would mean for him, his life had been altered so completely that those around him were more than a little shocked. He decided to actually use some of the fruits he had gained from his part in the war, buying a nice house in Ottery St. Catchpole for him and Zacharael to be close to the rest of their family.

"Dad?"

They're playing catch, the pig skin ball moving back and forth across the sky in a wide arch.

"Yeah, Zach?"

"Why don't I have a mother?" The voice is small, plaintive almost, and Ron feels something hard settle on his heart.

"You have a mother, Zach. Everyone has a mother,"

The ball thunks into Ron's hands, and he avoids looking at the child's face. Eleven years old, and Ron is continually surprised by what he finds in the black liquorice eyes of this boy who has become his son.

After an answer like that, a normal child would ask him, _where was his mother then? Why did she leave them? What did she look like? Does she not love him?_

Instead, Ron looked into those night dark eyes and found an understanding deeper and more ancient than anything he had seen in his life. So they kept on throwing the ball back and forth, trying to ignore the thread between them that before had been so light and delicate, that had become weighed down by the heaviness of all the things they could not say.

* * *

Pansy Rheanna Flint died on a Sunday morning, at the age of thirty-three. It was said that she succumbed to septicaemia after a routine procedure at St. Mungo's. There had been nothing that anybody could have done to save her.

All of the upstanding pureblood citizens unanimously decided to ignore the closed casket, the dry eyes of Zylphia Flint, and the guilt-hardened face of her husband Harold. Most of all, they ignored the feverish, unhealthy air that surrounded the grieving husband himself.

So what if a man has scratches on his hands and bruises on his knuckles? It does not mean he beat someone to death. There are always logical explanations for these things.

Except in some cases, there just aren't.

* * *

 **Author's Note: This story began as an entry to a challenge back in 2012. I never finished it, and obviously it's too late to enter it now. It morphed into something bigger than I thought, and I've been working on it on and off for the last three years. Your readership is appreciated, and I would love to hear what you think. Parts II and III to come soon.**


	2. PART II

**DISCLAIMER:** **All rights to the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. Summary quote is attributed to George Orwell, from his book 1984.**

 **WARNING: This story contains references to violence, domestic and otherwise.**

* * *

 **THE TRUTH**

 **\- a story told in three parts -**

 **Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1996.**

 _Pansy strides. She consciously elongates her steps, enjoying the clack of her chunk-heeled mary-janes as she tries to keep up with Draco's longer legs. It's definitely past curfew, although Pansy hasn't bothered to check the time. Every ounce of common sense seems to fly out the window when she's with Draco. There's always been something about the way his sun-spun, blanch-white hair curls softly in the lantern light that makes her mind go blank with desire. She's with him, so she attempts to keep up, but it always seems like she's one step behind._

 _Up ahead, the corridor narrows around a dark corner, and Pansy takes a deep, gulping breath. She's not really sure why until she sees the shadow round the corner heading towards her and Draco. It's hard to see in the limp light emanating from the wall sconces, so all Pansy can make out is newly broadened shoulders stretching against the seams of too-small robes and the gleam of copper-coloured hair._

 _Light blue eyes narrow as Ron Weasley takes in the arrogant stride of Draco Malfoy. He sighs, running his hands through his already mussed hair. It's past curfew, and he shouldn't be out as it is. The last thing he needs is to engage in an altercation with Malfoy._

 _"Ah! If it isn't another Weasley. It seems one can't take a turn around the school without bumping into one of your brethren," Malfoy says snidely, pinching his face into a narrow, unappealing expression._

 _Ron rolls his eyes. He's itching for a fight, for something to take his mind off his mess of a life, but this is neither the time nor the place. His hands twitch at his sides, and he knows he'll regret it in the morning._

 _"Not now, Malfoy. I haven't got the time for this," Ron attempts to move past the other boy, but is caught by the arm that shoots out in front of him._

 _Long, pale fingers press harshly into the cold stone of the walls, Malfoy's thinly muscled forearm blocking Ron's advancement along the corridor. To his surprise, Ron notices that Malfoy is actually taller than him by a few inches. He sizes him up, noticing the large emerald ring on his right hand and the glint of silver in his narrow-toothed smirk. That damned silver tooth of his. Sudden anger flares in Ron's stomach, burning up his insides, and with one quick, forceful movement, he shoves past Malfoy's arm, throwing the leaner boy into the adjacent wall. Hot, hard bursts of corrosive anger lick and scorch their way through his insides, so vicious that despite not being completely sure of their origin, he doesn't really care._

 _Malfoy's silver eyes become as flat and shiny as dirty diamonds, and Ron pushes back his sleeves. Malfoy skirts towards him, and Ron dodges a sharply delivered punch. It is only after he turns back around that he notices Pansy Parkinson standing in the mouth of the corridor, her dark eyes gleaming in the firelight. Malfoy uses this split second of distraction to launch a brutal swing from behind, knocking the air out of Ron._

 _"Draco, wait!" Pansy yells, a sudden impulse._

 _Her sudden bravery is shocking, especially when she finds herself moving forward, placing herself between the stocky redhead and her Draco. She extends trembling hands, placing them on his lean, wiry chest, feeling the bunch and release of his pectorals as he breathes heavily._

 _"Please, Draco, let's just go," she whispers, her voice no more than a breath._

 _Looking up at his smooth white face, Pansy feels her heart beat increase in tempo as Draco's eyes become cold and alive with rage. It seems like slow motion as his arm sweeps across her face, throwing her backwards and into something hard. Arms that feel like steel bands wrap around her torso to keep her from falling, and she can register nothing but the sting in her cheek and the ringing in her ears._

 _She sees Draco, the veins in his forehead bulging as he yells. At her. Tears blur her vision as she realizes that she's only made matters worse. They had been about to take a moonlight walk – Pansy was only just earning his forgiveness for her latest bout of misbehaviour. And now this. Now this. A horrible, aching desperation takes root in her bones, and she burns with the knowledge of what is to come. She doesn't realize she's crying until her tears drip off her face and on to Ron Weasley's arms, prompting him to swiftly release her from his grasp. She barely notices as he shoves her behind him._

 _Ron is seething. If he was angry before, he's ten times angrier now. Draco Malfoy's face is pulp beneath his fists before he even registers what just happened. All he can see as his fist smashes into the other boy's face is the face of Pansy Parkinson – small, pale, almost beautiful, and hurt. Ron Weasley has seen and done many things in his lifetime, but one thing he has never allowed is the abuse of the weak. And Pansy is weak. Anyone with eyes could see that._

 _Malfoy scrambles free of Ron's fists, his flight instinct taking over. He runs down the corridor in a panic, leaving Pansy trembling with a growing bruise on her cheek, being borne down upon by a towering, rage-ridden Gryffindor. The wind of anger is taken out of Ron's sails at the sight of the small, scared girl staring at him like he is simultaneously the most monstrous and most amazing thing she has ever seen. He reaches for her on impulse, and feels a low, muted sort of fury at the way she shrinks from him, cringing as if his violence on her skin is an inevitability. He has the sudden urge to hold her until she realizes that it's not even a thought. His hand drops abruptly to his side._

 _"I'm sorry you had to see that," he says, his voice cracking the silence like an axe against an oak tree._

 _Her eyes move restlessly across his face, seeing things she shouldn't. She doesn't respond._

 _Ron opens his mouth to say something, something polite but dismissive without being too friendly, when the idea of one more bloody pretence becomes too much for him to handle. Indignant, masculine rage is still rushing through his veins, and he knows Parkinson can tell. He can see it in the way she shrinks from him and curls her little fingers around each other. He hates it all._

 _"Hey, it's okay. Really, don't worry about him. And don't worry about me,"_

 _He lets out a sudden bark of laughter. "We're all bastards anyway,"_

 _His tone is hardened and caustic, thinly veiling a thick, custardy layer of self-loathing that both disturbs and intrigues Pansy in ways she had not thought possible. She feels sorry for him for a moment. Sorry and afraid, but mostly sorry. She knows she should say something, some expression of gratitude for his heroism, but her cheek still tingles where a man's hand collided with it, and she keeps her mouth shut._

 _Ron sighs at her silence. "At least let me walk you back to your dormitory. It's late,"_

 _His hand rests just shy of the small of her back, and Pansy feels impelled forward, like they are the south ends of two different magnets being forced together. As they walk, she notices how tall he seems, how broad his shoulders are, and for the first time in a long time she feels safe. He is utterly proprietary and polite, masculine in a way that isn't frightening. She is almost regretful when they reach the entrance to the Slytherin common room. She sees how he eyes the green lake slime coating the walls in this deep dungeon entrance, and she feels ashamed. The perfect juxtaposition: the strong, virile, bright Gryffindor, with the small, pathetic, limp Slytherin girl._

 _Pansy turns away from him abruptly, but he stops her with a firm hand on her shoulder. She flinches away, and Ron thinks he could snap her collarbones in half with little effort. It makes him feel sick._

 _"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you," he says quietly._

 _She turns back to face him. She tries to maintain eye contact, but his eyes are cornflower blue and like x-rays._

 _"Thank you for walking me back. And for… for before. It's not always like this. I… Just, thank you,"_

 _Pansy manages to stutter out the words, but it doesn't seem like enough. She cannot adequately express her gratitude for what Ron Weasley has done for her tonight._

 _Ron doesn't even think about the offer when he makes it. "Listen Parkinson, I know we've never really gotten on, but Malfoy treating you like that goes beyond the pale. Any man treating you like that goes beyond the pale. It doesn't fly with me,"_

 _He pauses for a second, watching her throat work, mechanically wondering if those are tears shining like beacons in her obsidian eyes._

 _He clears his throat, and he is bewitched. "If you ever need help, with anything, don't be afraid to ask, okay Parkinson? Just promise me you're done with Malfoy. You deserve better than him,"_

 _To his dying day, he will never forget the look in her large black eyes when he says that. It makes something soft and unmanly unfurl in his chest, something breakable and not at all Ron Weasley._

 _"I promise," she says, her voice swirling and whirling around him like a perfect chocolate curl._

* * *

As Ron stands at her grave, he remembers that night, and he hates himself as he feels that same soft, unmanly place harden in his chest. She kept her promise. But neither of them realized it would be out of the frying pan and into the fire, a life of slaps and cruel crimped words exchanged for dragon-hide boot kicks to the stomach and dead babies. Maybe it's his fault she's dead. Malfoy may have hurt her, but he wouldn't have killed her. But then, how could either of them regret Pansy's marriage to Flint when Zacharael, the best thing life had offered either of them, was the product of the union?

Guilt upon guilt upon hate upon guilt. It was too much for a man, too much for anyone.

Malfoy, the man who hurt her.

Flint, the man who killed her.

Ron, the man who would have loved her.

He realizes two important things, standing there at Pansy Parkinson's grave. One, is that the word "would" means nothing at all. Intent is completely immaterial unless it is acknowledged.

And two? Two is that the choices we never knew we had are the easiest ones to make, and the hardest ones to live with.

Or without.

* * *

When Zacharael was sorted into Slytherin, Ron felt a sharp, punching shock that pierced him straight to the core. Logically, he supposed it made sense, as both his biological parents had been Slytherins, and being in Slytherin didn't automatically relegate one to villainy. Ron knew this, and yet he felt a curious distance begin to form between him and his son. Foolishly, Ron had thought that being raised as a Weasley had erased any taint of the Flint blood that ran through Zacharael's veins.

Slowly, he began to see that he was wrong.

* * *

Zacharael felt misrepresented from day one at Hogwarts. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that he didn't belong in Slytherin. He didn't really belong anywhere, and was therefore doomed to be a misfit no matter whom he was with. His family treated him as they always had, and for that he was grateful. He knew he was lucky to have been born a Weasley, especially since the family name was no longer associated with abject poverty thanks to his father's part in the war. He had the greatest family in the world, although he was probably the only Weasley to wish he had been born with the trademark red hair.

The Weasley "look", that salt-of-the-earth coarseness that was both friendly and humble, was absent in Zacharael's face. He knew genetics could be strange like that, but it didn't stop him from wishing that he didn't appear so patrician, so exotic, like some sort of long-legged, smooth-featured, rare animal that had been collected and domesticated. He was aware his face was handsome, his leanly muscled frame appealing. He also knew that some of his male cousins found his strange beauty off-putting and enviable (except perhaps Louis, whose Veela blood made him shimmer and shine like mermaid scales in sunlight), and he supposed it was. But looking in the mirror, walking down the corridors, Zacharael felt only foppish. He yearned to be like his father, a coarsely built man who was neither handsome nor beautiful, but masculine to the core. He was a protector, a provider, everything a man should be.

Ever the pragmatist, Zacharael knew that he would always be long and lean and graceful without trying to be, so he compensated for his apparent boyishness in other ways. Like waves against beach rocks, he set out to erode himself into the man he knew his father wanted him to be.

The man _he_ wanted to be.

* * *

Titania Malfoy was, in Zacharael's opinion, ridiculously named, for she was the softest, most delicate person he had ever met. She was only of middling height, but her vulnerability had nothing to do with her actual physical proportions and everything to do with her manner. She didn't slouch, but her shoulders never seemed to be as far apart as they should. She secreted herself away, as if she was begging not be noticed by body language alone. This of course, did nothing but draw attention to her. Usually the wrong sort.

She was the epitome of a Hufflepuff, and her natural reaction to a drunk Lorcan Scamander pushing her up against a wall and slobbering all over her with his wet firewhiskey breath was to nervously press her gentle hands against his wide shoulders and wriggle like a little worm caught on a hook. Seeing her predicament simultaneously made Zacharael's heart melt and testosterone-infused blood surge through his veins. Rationally, he knew Lorcan was a generally good guy who'd just had a few too many drinks at a bit too wild of a party. But in that moment, Zach felt the complete opposite of rational.

A black haze descended over his vision, and it was only later that he learned what had happened. How he had beaten Scamander so viciously that it had taken four other boys to drag him away, writhing, twitching, and animalistic. He had never felt so ashamed in his life. He dutifully received the detentions and scoldings, and apologized profusely to Lorcan and his family, who were less angry than they were shocked.

It was only after his father had come to Hogwarts and held him in his arms, nothing but worry and love seeming to dribble from every one of his pores, that Zacharael remembered what it had felt like to smash his fist into Lorcan's face with complete abandon. As he looked into his father's shadowy, cornflower blue eyes, he remembered, and he despaired.

It had felt like madness.

* * *

Nobody really knew or understood how Zacharael Weasley and Titania Malfoy ended up together. In fact, Zacharael himself was surprised that she had even given him the time of day after watching him hurt someone so savagely. It seemed that she was the only one, besides his father, who never looked at him as if he had the potential to explode into monstrosity. Titania's rain-cloud grey eyes held no wariness, no fear, not even when he was peevish or irritated, and Zacharael held her trust close to his heart. He was not a naturally emotive or winsome man, but with her, feeling her small hands curl around his, and feeling the weight of her rest against him, his life suddenly seemed more significant than words could ever express. He was a man with her, a protective, passionate, provisional man who took care of business. It always seemed, as they lay together and she traced the fine planes of his aristocratic face, that she loved him in spite of his beauty, and not because of it. The distinction was more important to him than anybody realized. He was her rock, her refuge, her haven.

Never a monster. But a man.

* * *

When the time came for Zacharael to meet Titania's family, he wasn't sure what to do or how to think, look, act or feel. He knew their families were enemies as a matter of course. There wasn't exactly a protocol or set of instructions for dealing with situations like this. So Zacharael settled on being himself, his deepest, most authentic self, and he was surprised at the results.

Draco Malfoy was prepared to dislike him, and he did, at first. Their handshake was short and fierce, his greeting terse. Dinner was quiet, except for little forays into conversation made by Titania and Mrs. Malfoy, who was a compact woman with mouse brown hair. It was a trifle awkward, but not terrible, and Zacharael was pleased it hadn't gone any worse, though he could tell Titania was ashamed of how her father was behaving.

The turning point in the night came when Mr. Malfoy asked to speak to Zacharael in private. They went to his office, which was large and masculine with dark tooled leather chairs and oriental carpets. Malfoy poured him a firewhiskey, and Zacharael drank it, though he hated the stuff. Malfoy was in the middle of describing what he would do to Zacharael if he ever set one toe out of place with his daughter, when he cut off mid-sentence. He stared at Zach, straight into his eyes, and Zacharael was suddenly aware of what an intimate thing looking right into someone's eyes truly is. It was unnerving to have a man like Draco Malfoy stare at him with such intensity, with an expression that seemed for all the world like he was seeing something in Zacharael's black eyes that should never have been there at all.

The tall, elegant man swallowed so hard that his Adam's apple bobbed like a marionette on a string. Something in his eyes unraveled, something that Zacharael knew he should not have been privy to. This was more than private. What was happening inside Draco Malfoy right then was sacred.

"Treat my daughter well, Weasley," he said in a low, gruff tone that was eons away from the polished, gleaming silver words people had come to associate with Draco Malfoy. The last word, Zacharael's surname, was spoken with an imperceptible hesitation. Truly imperceptible, but we know it was there.

That little meeting puzzled Zacharael for a number of days afterwards. The whole affair had gone about as he had expected, barring that curious pocket of time spent in Draco Malfoy's office. When the man rejoined them after a long, awkward ten minutes, if he had been anyone else except the forbidding man with steel grey eyes and a heart that likely matched, Zacharael would have sworn that he had been weeping.

* * *

Ron had to sneak onto the Flint estate like a thief in the night, which was exactly what he was, come to think of it. Occasionally he had fleeting moments of guilt when he thought of Marcus Flint sitting in one of those special hospitals where they only put rich people who are crazy (the rest of us just have to deal with it), mouldering away, while Ron holds and loves and takes care of and pride in a child that rightfully belongs to another man.

He shakes his head roughly as he approaches Pansy's gravestone, and the guilt evaporates as quickly as it appears. Zacharael is his in all the ways that count, and as Ron lets his fingers trace over the etching on the stone, he remembers Pansy as she was the last time he saw her. Not thin, but the extra skin hanging off her bones in a way that brought to mind dust and ghosts and hidden things. Her skin had ceased to look bruised, rather taken on the quality of a perpetual wine-stained tinge that could never be washed away. Ron closed his eyes tightly, trying to banish the image. But he knew that Pansy Parkinson (he refused to think of her in any other way), in all her tragic sweetness, would haunt him until his dying day.

"He's safe, sweetheart," Ron whispers to her, knowing that somehow she can hear him. "I know that's all you ever wanted. Whatever else I have or haven't done, I've kept our Zach safe,"

The words seem to vibrate from between his lips, taking on a power of their own until they fill the night air. Ron tastes them, swallows them, revels in them, and he knows that if he never did one more good thing with the rest of his life, he had this. He had Zach.

He had kept his promise.

* * *

A large, elegant owl with feathers black as ravens wings brings Zacharael a letter on an otherwise unremarkable day. He reads the letter, and studies the small, black and white wedding photo that came with it. He reads the letter again, and he is suddenly glad he is alone. Looking into the warped mirror on his wardrobe, his face seems to change before his very eyes. He sees things in himself that he hadn't wanted to acknowledge. He sees these things, and he is struck by the deep, enlightened understanding of the damned.

He is no longer a misfit. Instead, he feels ancient, like he has lived a hundred lives, and none of them truly for himself. A hundred lives of half-living in a world he was never meant to inhabit. He turns away abruptly. He reads the letter a third time, memorizing that neat, compact script, and studying the photo until his eyes force his body to shed tears. He sits there for hours, taking it all in. His life suddenly has context, meaning, and he is galvanized to action as he has never before been in his life.

Sometimes I wonder, if he had looked in the mirror one last time before he left his room like a lion after a gazelle, I wonder if what he saw would have stayed his hand, made him think, remember, contemplate that who he was was nothing more than what he had chosen to be.

If he had looked in the mirror he would have seen the black, black eyes of his mother, blazing with all the fury and madness of a man he had never even met.

A man who, they would say later, died at the hands of his only son.

* * *

 **Author's Note: And so it continues. Thanks for your readership, and any reviews really are very much appreciated. Part III coming soon!**


	3. PART III

**DISCLAIMER: All rights to the Harry Potter series belong the J.K. Rowling. Summary quote is attributed to George Orwell, from his book 1984.**

 **WARNING: This story contains references to violence, domestic and otherwise.**

* * *

 **THE TRUTH**

 **\- a story told in three parts -**

 _ **"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."**_

 _ **\- Albus Dumbledore (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone)**_

It was a case that polarized the wizarding world. It all came out rather quickly – the truth has a way of doing that. Ron imagined the truth (his enemy, at this point), sitting in a shadowy corner, biding its time, waiting until people started to miss it, waiting until it had done all the damage it could, before exploding into some great, huge, blinding thing that could neither be quantified nor ignored.

According to the reports of the first responding aurors, Zacharael Passchar Weasley had broken into Brooke-Meade Sanitarium, incapacitating anyone who tried to stop him. He went directly to Marcus Flint's sprawling apartments where he had stunned Zylphia Flint with a quick, potent curse, cast aside his wand, and proceeded to beat Marcus Flint to death. This last section was conjecture, as the door had been locked and barred, and there was not technically an eyewitness.

The crux of the case lay in two points:

a) Zacharael Passchar Weasley had no motive. This was an act of senseless, brutal violence. The act of a psychopath, or a madman.

b) The accused would neither confess to the crime, nor deny his obvious guilt. His was an absolute silence, a silence that spoke of relief, fulfillment and satisfaction, not innocence.

Ron was paralyzed. His world had come crashing down around his ears, it seemed. Everyone was supportive, his friends, family, and coworkers, but there was something in their eyes, in their countenances, that seemed to say, _we knew something was wrong with him. You've raised a monster Ron, you've raised a monster_. Their sympathy was for him, not his son, and he hated them for it. He hated them all, but he hated himself more. _My fault_ , he wanted to say. Those were the two refrains that pounded his temples like some morbid, hell-bound tune: _my fault, and then how did he find out?_

Surprisingly, the only person who stood up for his son, or tried to, was Draco Malfoy. Ron was sitting in his office, poring over papers and documents, trying to find some precedent, something to keep his son from the dementor's kiss, when Draco Malfoy burst into the room in a flourish of dove grey robes, something manic in his eyes. This was the last thing Ron wanted. He had barely spoken to Malfoy since Hogwarts, and now was not the time he wanted to start again. He couldn't handle any of this, and Malfoy could see that in his gaze plain as day.

"I won't stay long, Weasley," he said quickly, the words seeming to trip over themselves, "My daughter is in shreds because of what's happened with that boy of yours. I won't have it,"

He paused, seeming to internally debate what he was going to say next.

"Look, he killed Flint, but so what? Flint was scum, everyone who's anyone knows that," he let out a sudden, morbid laugh. "The boy's only mistake was not doing away with that harpy of a mother of his at the same time. Zylphia Flint, now there's a piece of work," his tone was derisive, his gaze piercing, and Ron didn't know what to say.

Malfoy continued, "She's the only reason the Wizengamot is pushing for the kiss at all, you know. If it weren't for her connections and self-righteous, wounded rage, everyone would be happy sticking the boy in the loony bin. A better fate than death at least,"

Ron looked at Malfoy, who was now pacing back and forth, talking more and more to himself, seeming to turn the case over in his mind. Ron stared at him, and he despaired. He felt the black coldness of grief that was the antithesis of hope settle wetly over his skin, and he could have sworn that it was him in that soft, sucking dementor's embrace. _Too soon_ , he thought.

Too soon.

Malfoy stopped speaking abruptly, whatever he was seeing in Ron's face making his own go cold and hard. An expression flitted briefly across his face, something Ron couldn't recognize or make sense of. It felt significant, and then it was forgotten. Malfoy's eyes, usually so rigid, looked like liquid mercury right then, cold, but soft and sinuous, poisonous.

"I'm a lawyer, Weasley, and a damned good one. I'm going to try and help your, son, if only for my daughter's sake," he said emphatically, turning to leave.

He hesitated briefly before adding, "Don't give up. You're the only thing he's got left now,"

Malfoy left, and Ron went back to wondering what the point of anything was anymore.

* * *

They failed, and that is all there is to say. Despite Malfoy throwing his weight around like a boxer in a pigpen, he was unable to reach certain high-ranking members of the Wizengamot. Zylphia Flint played to the cameras and onlookers like a pageant queen until the name Zacharael Passchar Weasley became synonymous with cold-blooded, psychopathic murderer.

Ron felt deeply betrayed by the truth. The truth had come out not long after Flint's death, ferreted out by some enterprising young journalistic mind. There had been a big splash in the Prophet, written quite sympathetically, about Pansy's failed, violent marriage to a madman, and how her son had avenged her in his own twisted way. The article even had a quote from Saskia, the maid who had delivered Zacharael to Ron. It leant the story respectability, but even that was not enough. Zylphia Flint's bright, shining anguish seemed more palatable to the masses than some story that was completely based on circumstantial evidence and conjecture written by a wet-behind-the-ears young journalist. It didn't seem to matter that it was, in fact, the truth. Ron had assumed that the truth would have some weight, some heaviness about it that would seep into people's minds and make them recognize it for what it was; cold, hard, and unvarnished. But in reality, the truth was light and clean and utterly forgettable – it flew away on steel wings leaving everyone who had been counting on it in its wake.

Ron watched from outside barred doors as Zacharael was chained to a chair, the starving dementor kept locked in the next cell sensing his vitality and pressing itself sinuously against the bars. Waiting.

The tall, thick, coal-haired auror that was overseeing the administering of the kiss had a face carved in vast, desolate lines, and Ron saw the doom painted clearly on his face. Even he, this great, large man who had probably witnessed hundreds of these deaths-in-the-worst-ways, was affected by the sight of Ron's tow-headed, angel-haired son sitting on the chopping block like some pagan sacrifice.

No one asked if Zacharael had any last words. It wasn't technically part of the protocol, and it seemed too real, too callous, too routine to do so. Not in this instance. Zacharael seemed to sense that, and he spoke anyway. It made Ron want to burst into hysterical laughter or tears or some combination of the two, because his son was finally breaking his silence, minutes away from his own finality.

"I did it for my mother," he said slowly, his voice low and smooth, staring down at his hands chained together in his lap.

"I never knew her, but I know she was beautiful, and I know she loved me. When I read the letter, when I realized how she lived, how she died…" his voice trailed off, and a far-off look entered his eyes. It seemed like he was looking beyond the room, seeing something that existed only in his own mind.

His eyes snapped suddenly to Ron's, and they looked so ancient, so world-weary, that Ron could scarcely believe they belonged to the small, soft-skulled infant that he had loved and cherished and called his own.

"I don't regret what I did," Zach said in a sure voice like stone, "I did what any man would have, should have done,"

Guilt fell in waves like a flood, consuming Ron, churning and mashing and pulverizing whatever goodness or happiness was left inside him. His son's last words were to him, and they condemned him. The disappointment in Zach's eyes, the accusation was so plain and so deserved. Cold, icy fingers of pain poked and prodded until Ron had a curious sense of detachment, seeming to recognize in some mechanical, clinical part of himself that he would never be happy again. The selfishness of such a thought at a time like this was not lost on him, and it only compounded the guilt he was already feeling. Ron was paralyzed in this state of abject horror and misery, and as everyone left the cell, and the dementor was loosed on the tall, exotic, beautiful boy that sat on the prison chair like an angel king on his throne of clouds, he couldn't move. He watched as the life force of his child was sucked and tasted and swallowed, and all he could see were those eyes, black like his mother's, and the words they said so clearly: _How could you have let her live like that? Why didn't you save her? Why did you force me to do what you should have done?_ And most clearly: _Why did you lie to me for my entire life?_

Ron knew the answers to all those questions and more. He knew there were logical, rational explanations. He felt a sudden panic, a burning need to make Zacharael understand the sacrifices they had made, all of it for love. All of it for him. It was only then that he truly comprehended in his horror-struck, shock-frozen mind that his son was dead, his empty husk slumped over in the cold chair, the sated dementor fluttering around like a butterfly from hell.

In that moment, Ron understood Pansy Parkinson and her pain more vividly than anyone has and ever will. He thought that he comprehended her pain before; he'd seen the bruises and contusions and the brokenness, and he'd thought he'd known.

How stupid he was. No one can understand the pain of watching their child be killed in front of their eyes, knowing the whole time that it was their fault entirely, without experiencing it first hand. It is a fate I would wish on no one. Everything clicked into place for Ron, and his anguished roar tore through the prison like a sandstorm in the desert. His love for Pansy, his love for Zacharael, and how he failed them both in spectacular ways for what amounted to the same reason. Some hero he was.

As the aurors carried Zach through to the door at the back of the cell, something inside Ron snapped.

"Get away from him," It begins as a low, quiet, menacing warning.

"Get away from him!" He is yelling now, trying to reach through the bars.

"GET AWAY FROM MY SON!" he cries, louder than he has ever been in his life. Ron throws himself viciously against the cell bars separating him from his son, slamming his large body without reserve over and over again into the metal, his desperation absolute.

He is like the dementor, trying to force his way into the room, except it is not a vital, breathing form that is compelling him, but a lifeless one. _Too little, too late._ He was told later that they stupefied him, when he refused to be calmed, and his yells reached a fevered, alien pitch. He didn't care. When he woke up, the only thing that concerned him was the fact that his son was dead, he was to blame, and nothing could bring him back. He wanted the darkness of unconsciousness. He never wanted to think or hear or see or feel anything ever again.

It was due to this intense, all-consuming grief that he didn't think back to Zacharael's last words, and ponder over the letter he had referred to, and the mystery it presented.

That would come later.

* * *

Draco Malfoy had always thought suicide to be a most selfish idea. That was, of course, until his daughter tried to kill herself by swallowing an entire bottle of old Skele-Gro. Fatherhood had taught him many things, and he prided himself on knowing his children inside out. He studied them with an almost clinical curiosity, although his aloofness was innate and part of who he was, as a father he was as far from Lucius Malfoy as could be possible.

Titania was a sweet, mild-mannered, inoffensive girl, to her grandmother's eternal delight. She always aimed to please, chose to submit rather than argue, and always, always put the needs of others before her own. She was a constant joy to Draco, although he privately worried that she would end up with a man like so many he knew, a man who would take a girl like her and break her down until she snapped like a dry twig. She needed a man who would protect her and cradle her and cherish her, and although he would rather have died than admit it, he had been starting to think that Zacharael Weasley could have been that man.

After the boy's death (execution, really, but what an ugly word), Titania retreated from everyone. She kept her grief close to her heart, like a wounded animal that seeks privacy to slowly die alone. Of course they were all worried, trying to do whatever they could to make her feel better, knowing that time would be the only balm to the open contusions that had been left on her heart. No one could have anticipated the depths of the pain she felt, and the lengths she would go to to relieve herself of it.

He remembers saying to her, _This too shall pass_ , and the look in her eyes must have been the same look Jesus gave Judas before he was crucified. It was a look he had never seen before, betrayal and pain and horror written so clearly that it makes him break out in a sweat just to remember it. It was that evening that the house elf found her unconscious with the bottle of Skele-Gro lying empty on the floor, and the significance of that is not lost on Draco Malfoy.

It's just one more thing to blame himself for.

The healers say Titania will live, and in his moment of panicked joy upon hearing those words, he feels a sudden, sharp pang of sympathy for Ron Weasley. For the first time since Zacharael's death, it makes Draco think about what he did, and what he has to atone for before he will be able to look his daughter in the eye again.

* * *

It takes two years for Ron to find the letter, the missive that held the answers to the questions that had been torturing him. It's strange how men's reaction to grief is always based upon an innate desire to know as much as possible, to rationalize and dissect until the tragedy resembles nothing more than a nightmarish science experiment; _why, how, could it have been prevented?_ Ron Weasley was no exception, and he positively ravaged himself into a state of suspended animation in his relentless search to find out exactly what had happened to make it all go so wrong.

Since Zacharael's death, Ron's memories of him have begun to take on a dream-like quality. He tries to remember things about his son: mannerisms, gestures, the exact tilt of his exotic black eyes, but finds himself unable to hold the recollections in his mind for more than a few seconds at a time. Like sand slipping through his fingers, each day he feels more and more detached, and more and more unnerved by the memories he does have. It comes to a head when he learns about Titania Malfoy, and the sheer, very real depth of the relationship she had with his son. He hadn't imagined Zacharael to be in love, couldn't see it in his countenance or feel it in the way he moved. It was alien and disturbing, and not at all the way a parent should remember a child. It makes Ron hate himself, but sometimes, in secret, private moments of unbearable grief, he feels as if he never really knew his son at all.

The letter, found neatly taped to the underside of Zacharael's dormitory bureau, along with a picture that makes Ron's heart squeeze his hands into fists, changes everything.

* * *

Draco Malfoy takes the bait. He knows what is going to happen the minute he receives Ron Weasley's owl asking to meet him at Pansy Flint's grave. It's a dark, awkward, sad place to conduct any sort of meeting, but Draco goes. Weasley is standing in front of the headstone when he arrives, as if to protect Pansy from him even in death, and it brings Draco back to that night in sixth year so many years ago when he was young and idiotic and cruel to a girl who only wanted to be loved. And good, moral Ron Weasley was still standing up for her, defending her, even in death. It made Draco feel a breathtaking wash of shame, and a pool of regret puddled in his stomach.

 _So many things to atone for._

Weasley's eyes shine brightly in the darkness with a brilliant, obsessed light. Draco sees the old, crinkled wedding photo clutched in Weasley's work-roughened hand, and he swallows hard as his suspicions are confirmed. Weasley has found the letter, and now Draco is going to die. It's a simple equation, like one plus one equals two. It amazes Draco how easy it is to rationalize this important moment that he'd always known would come. Evil being vanquished by good, the way the story is supposed to end.

Ron raises his wand, willing his hand not to shake. The words from the letter he has now memorized swim in his head, the letter that drove his son to his grave, and as he stares at the man whose long, spidery fingers wrote those unspeakable words, Ron feels an ugly, putrid form of hate twist in his gut and explode behind his eyelids. Malfoy raises his hands in a placating gesture, opening his mouth to speak, but Ron wants none of it. The situation is past explanations.

"You bastard," he spits, barely containing his fury. "You told him. You told him everything," Ron's voice cracks on the last word, and he is horrified to find a sob trapped in his throat.

This is his chance to be the man he should have been years ago when he allowed a woman to be beaten into submission and eventually death by a madman. His inaction then is the only reason Zacharael had to do what he did. His son, the baby he raised, forced to right a wrong that he had ignored in his own weakness and cowardice. The shame is choking, making it hard to breathe. Now is his chance. He had failed to take care of Flint the way a man should've, but he would take care of Malfoy, just like he had that day in sixth year.

Malfoy speaks before Ron can silence him. "I did," he confesses in a soft, humble whisper.

Ron grits his teeth, feeling a coldness descend over his haze of anger. "I should've gotten rid of you years ago, you bloody rutting bastard, after the way you treated her,"

Draco doesn't ask who the "her" is, because he knows. They are on the same page this time. He wants to apologize for how he hurt Pansy, but he knows it's too little too late. He wants to explain, to tell Weasley how he was raised in a home where men hit women all the time and it was only when he grew up and left home and met people and had experiences that the depth of his father's influence faded, and he finally learned how a man should treat a woman. He had never hurt his wife, or his daughter, and the mere thought of him or any man doing so made him see red with rage. Now, at this stage in his life, he looks back on what he did to Pansy Parkinson when he was young and so, so confused and he wants to kill his father, Flint, that terrible version of himself, and any and all men who think it's acceptable to behave like the boy he used to be.

He keeps his mouth shut. He knows Weasley doesn't want to hear what he has to say, and he supposes that's his prerogative. Draco always knew it would catch up with him eventually.

Weasley looks at him, wand still raised, and a calculating look sweeps across his face. "How did you know? How did you know the secret of Zacharael's parentage?" He swallows suddenly, anguish like blue flames in his eyes, his voice hitching and cracking in ways that make Draco feel like the cad he knows he is.

"And why, for God's sake why, did you take it upon yourself to tell him something you had no right to? Why did you do that?" Weasley whispers the last part, his voice filled with a desolation that is difficult for either of them to bear.

Draco considers lying. He ponders spinning a tale that would give Weasley the closure he needs. This would be the kind thing to do, to protect a grieving man from a devastating truth. But standing there at wandpoint, Draco decides that while he may not like the man in front of him, he does respect him, perhaps more than he has respected any man in his life.

As the ugly, cold truth spills from his lips, Draco realizes that this is the first time he has ever had cause to hate himself for doing the right thing.

"Before she came to you, Pansy wrote to me," he begins haltingly; hating how he knows this story will end.

"I knew that her marriage was… less than satisfactory. Everyone did, really. But I had no idea how bad it truly was, how much she was forced to suffer until the day they put her in the ground,"

Malfoy's eyes are a shiftless malachite grey, and Ron feels a sudden deep thud in his gut telling him that he does not want to hear what comes next. But it's like a train wreck, and he can't look away.

Malfoy continues in a gravelly whisper, "After her second child died, she wrote to me, begging me to help her. I had just married Asteria and I didn't want distractions, especially not in the form of Pansy. She had always been dramatic, high-strung, and to me that was a good enough excuse to ignore her.

"She wrote again when she was pregnant with Zacharael. She told me she needed my help, that she needed me to take care of her baby that hadn't even been born yet. Even though I had never treated her well, she still trusted me that much. Or maybe she was just that desperate,"

Malfoy looks up suddenly, his face drawn in long, pleading lines.

"She never told me the extent of what Flint had done to her and the children, and the letter was convoluted and hard to follow. She sounded confused, misguided. I wasn't even sure if she was telling the truth or not," he adds in a rush.

The air is still between them, and Malfoy's hard gaze, glued to the gravestone at his back, fascinates Ron. It seems so wrong to be talking about this here. But then, what about any of this is right?

"I ignored her. I didn't even acknowledge that I'd received the letters," Malfoy swallows hard, forcing out words that sound as if they have been stuck in his throat for ages, "I despise myself for my callousness, but at the same time I'm happy for it, because it brought that child to you, Weasley.

"So that's why I told him. When I met your son I knew almost immediately that he was Pansy's, and I couldn't let you go on being this hero in the shadows," Malfoy admits, looking down and scuffing the toe of his boot in the dirt.

"I wanted him to know what his father had done for him. And I don't mean Flint. I mean you," he finishes painfully, his voice hushed in the heavily charged air.

The amount of agony in Malfoy's words is off the charts, and it blows Ron away to hear such pain from a man that is as cold as ice.

He whispers brokenly, "I didn't know that he would go off like that. I knew it would be painful to hear how his mother died, and why she had to give him up, but I never thought that he would…"

Ron is suddenly more tired than he has ever been in his life. He lowers his wand and turns his back on Malfoy, facing the gravestone. _We're both idiots, you and I._ Her first choice to care for her precious child was a man who'd only ever treated her like dirt, and while Ron didn't want to, he understood why. The things people are used to are not always things that are right or good, and Pansy Parkinson was no exception. She was a bad boy's girl, and she always had been. Forgiving her for that is easy, because it was never her fault in the first place.

Ron isn't even sure if Malfoy is still there, now that his life is no longer being threatened, but he speaks anyway. He wants them all to hear it: Pansy, Malfoy, Zach, even Flint, if he's listening.

"I should have killed him for what he did. I should have been the one to kill that wife-beating bastard with my own two hands even if it meant death for me too. I should have done it because in the world I wanted my son to live in, that was the right bloody thing to do," Ron whispers harshly.

He hears Malfoy's intake of breath behind him, and some part of Ron is glad that he stayed.

"It should have been me. But I wasn't man enough to do what had to be done, and now my son is dead and in the ground for doing what a real man would. What I should've,"

Malfoy comes to stand beside Ron, his hands in the pockets of his long black overcoat. Ron swipes angrily at the tears that have spontaneously appeared in his eyes.

He laughs suddenly, and it is a hard, unforgiving sound. "Now look at me, crying like a little girl. Some man you are, Ron Weasley," Ron spits out the words bitterly.

Malfoy looks at him suddenly, piercingly, and Ron is reminded of the tall, gangly boy who slapped Pansy Parkinson across the face in sixth year. Malfoy grins wryly, the expression at odds with the shame that has plastered itself across his patrician face, and Ron knows that Malfoy is thinking the same thing.

"I hate myself just as much as you do, Weasley, and I've got far more cause to. Think about that," Malfoy says, slapping him on the back in a sudden, out of place overture.

It's an odd thing to say, but funnily enough, it helps. Standing at Pansy Parkinson's grave with Draco Malfoy, Ron absorbs the fragile, terrible truth that has been presented to him like brussel sprouts on his birthday. He doesn't like it, but he swallows it, and it's only later that he looks back on that strange moment and is thankful for Malfoy's presence.

Just like that, a tradition, and maybe something like a friendship is born between Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy, and Pansy Parkinson smiles a small, sad smile from her place in the sky, wherever that may be.

* * *

Life for Titania Malfoy goes on in lurches and skips, sometimes so stagnant that she feels like she's drowning, and other times zipping by so fast that it's almost as if she has taken wing. It takes about six years before she doesn't wake up in the morning and think about hanging herself from the rafters with her tanned leather belt. Her depression is profound, and even when others cease to notice it, she knows that it's only because she's become a better actress, not because the pain has faded in any small way. She wishes she had died with Zacharael, her soul mate, if there could ever be such a thing, but as time passes she grows colder and harder and sees that death is not the answer. That's how the healing process begins.

She meets Adrian Card when she goes to live with Scorpius in Glasgow for a few months. She just has to get away from it all. Scorp is a good brother. Slightly domineering and a little overprotective, but Titania knows it comes from a place filled with love, so she forgives him every time he does something silly. Their relationship is based on that – Scorpius doing something foolish because he feels like he has to, and Titania forgiving him in that whimsical way she has.

Adrian is one of Scorpius' best friends, and Titania marrying him is wonderful. Everything pans out perfectly, it seems. I say that not to diminish the true affection held between Adrian and Titania, but to show how happiness sometimes goes hand in hand with ignorance, and how after all that time, Titania is really the only one she knows who still remembers and misses and loves Zacharael Passchar Weasley with the same fire and zeal as when he was beautiful and alive. She wishes that love would weather and fade like mere feelings are supposed to, eroded by the passage of time, but it doesn't, and so she loves and loves and loves until she's broken down and dried out.

As she looks back on that dark place in her life, Titania comes to realize that Adrian did save her. Truly, in every way that mattered. He is tall and handsome, with thick black hair and pale amber eyes, but for the longest time Titania could not truly take him in without the strange sense that she was looking at something backwards, like an inside out chocolate chip cookie. He says she's the only woman he's ever really loved, and she believes him, although she cannot say the same. She knows he knows she will never be able to love him so passionately as she once did another beautiful boy, but slowly, her love for him grows like an acacia flower until it resembles something it should. Adrian knows that if she could turn back time, or trade him for Zacharael Weasley, she would do it in a heartbeat, but he loves her anyway, and that makes all the difference. Over time, Titania's affection for the handsome man who isn't quite what she wants but perfect as he can be turns into something more, and they are content. She doesn't think about killing herself anymore. She gets older and plumper and happier, and they have three gorgeous children.

When their third child is born, a beautiful baby boy with Titania's white blonde curls and Adrian's amber eyes, and Adrian puts the name Zachary on his birth certificate without even asking her, Titania cries. As she thanks God for second chances and the amazing men she has somehow been lucky enough to have in her life, she thinks of Pansy Flint and her son and wonders how life can be so beautiful and so, so cruel.

* * *

Every year, on the anniversary of Pansy's death, Ron meets Malfoy. At first it happens by accident. They run into each other at the cemetery, or in some Knockturn Alley pub. Eventually, they stop pretending the meetings are coincidental, and just decide to be friends, in what is simultaneously the loosest and most involved sense of the word. They aren't the normal sort of friends who laugh and swap stories but the type that understand each other better than any other person in the world, and who are tethered together by something more powerful and far more sacred than choice.

So while the world goes on living and laughing and loving and ultimately forgetting the truth behind the smokescreen, you'll find Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy sitting in an establishment of ill repute getting blasted on firewhiskey, remembering Pansy Rheanna Flint née Parkinson and Zacharael Passchar Weasley, the indelible marks they left on the world, and the supernova lives they lived and left behind.

* * *

 **FIN**

* * *

 **Author's Note: First of all, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this story. Reviews really are very much appreciated. I don't usually do this, but I thought I would give a bit more information on this fanfiction, and how it came to be.**

 **This story was written for a Greek Mythology Challenge I entered in 2012. It was very free form - we simply had to tie in Greek Mythology with our story in some way. This was my plan:**

 _Rhea is the Titan of female fertility, motherhood and generation. She is sister and consort of Cronus, and mother of Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter and Hestia._

 _Helios is the Titan of the sun and guardian of oaths._

 _Characters:_

 _Rhea = Pansy Parkinson_

 _Cronus = Marcus Flint_

 _Helios = Ron Weasley_

 _Phaeton/Zeus = Zacharael Passchar Flint_

 **As always, your readership is appreciated, and thank you for sticking with The Truth.**


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